Owl Vomit Shows Human Impact on Ecosystem

One of the cooler things I did in high school was to investigate owl pellets to determine what the birds were eating. It was fairly gross, but also a cool way to learn about one small portion of a food chain.

Researchers in Utah are doing the same, only on a much larger scale, by investigating owl pellets from the time of the last ice age until now. They have found that the last century, which coincides with increased human activity has not been kind to the Owls. They are judging energy flow, or what I think of as caloric intake into the owl diet and have found it has decreased more than it did during the ice age.

The ecosystem of the western desert and scrublands has been seriously altered by humanity. Just thought I'd pass this along for those who are interested.

news.sciencemag.org...

a reply to: Midnight4444

This is very interesting and thx for sharing....

This part from the link you provided :

That resilience suggests that the direct impacts humans have had on the small animals’ habitats—through increasing pastureland or spreading invasive plants—are the driving force behind the recently unbalanced system, independent of climate change.

While having the community thrown out of its previous balance may mean the rodents will be less able to cope with manmade climate change, addressing those more local, human impacts is perhaps an easier challenge in the short term than dealing with climate change, Terry says. “Perhaps it means we can make a quicker difference in repairing the system just by focusing on habitat restoration. Maybe that’s a silver lining to all of this.”

So they have found a correlation between mans impact on the environment and the amount of energy required for a balanced system,it is disturbing that we are having such an effect that is measurable compared to the cyclic changes ......

Now i will go and see what else i can find on the subject....